printer friendly pageENGLISH 90: Fiction Writing
The elements of fiction writing: narration, description, and dialogue. Students write complete stories and participate in story workshops. Prerequisite:
PWR 1 (waived in summer quarter). NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Beaty, G. (PI)
;
Frisch, S. (PI)
;
HolyWhiteMountain, S. (PI)
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more instructors for ENGLISH 90 »
Instructors:
Beaty, G. (PI)
;
Frisch, S. (PI)
;
HolyWhiteMountain, S. (PI)
;
Labowskie, M. (PI)
;
Smith, A. (PI)
;
Tanaka, S. (PI)
;
Tomar, R. (PI)
;
Trahan, J. (PI)
;
Williams, Z. (PI)
ENGLISH 90AX: Creative Writing: The Magic of Baseball in Film & Fiction
In 1954, French-American historian and educator Jacques Barzun observed that "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." In this creative writing course, we'll examine the role of baseball (whether minuscule or major) in our lives and American culture and history at large by engaging with notable baseball films (The Natural, Field of Dreams, The Sandlot, and Moneyball), baseball literature, and critical essays. Why have scholars suggested "that baseball may be perceived as a sort of mirror in which values, power, politics, fashion, class, economics, and race be viewed in microcosm," as Ronald Briley writes in "Baseball and American Cultural Values"? How has baseball become intertwined with American identity? What is it about the sport that immediately evokes nostalgia on a national level? What do baseball legends have in common with canonical literary heroes? Through our process of discovery, we'll "pitch" baseball as an objective correlative and use it to power our own fiction. In this workshop designed for both rookie and pro writers, the goals and objectives are: to become acquainted with a brief overview of baseball's history and rules in the nineteenth century and beyond; to learn and experiment with the craft elements of fiction: character, POV, plot, and place; to improve upon incorporating research, analysis, and American popular culture into creative work; to deliver and receive collegial feedback about creative work within a supportive community; to hit a baseball (seriously!) and attend a San Francisco Giants game. Baseball, like creative writing, is an art form that takes practice, and every baseball player is part of a team. In the same way, no writer becomes great alone.
Last offered: Summer 2023
ENGLISH 90DC: DCI Sports Writing
Open to DCI Fellows and Partners only. In this seminar we will study and practice the many ways that creative writers frame, and even critique, an interest in athleticism, beauty, spectatorship, and achievement. We will look at and beyond the tropes and clichés of sports writing. Why do we write about sports? How do we write well about them? In what ways do our sports, competitions, and leisure activities reflect personal and collective beliefs about wellness, nature, the individual, and the society? To what end are those reflections cultivated and sustained? From regional fandom to the single adventurer, boxing and baseball to volleyball and table tennis, creative writers continue to mine a rich vein of 'sports writing'. In doing so, they demonstrate the creative and formal adaptability required to write with excellence about any subject matter, and under the circumstances of any subjectivity. Throughout the quarter, we will read a wide range of creative writing about sports by popular writers, literary authors, athletes, and journalists. We will discuss essays, book excerpts, testimonials, stories, and pieces of journalism. You will write and bring to workshop short and long pieces, and receive peer and instructor feedback. A variety of creative prompts and critical exercises will foster your understanding and appreciation of literature, as well as your growth as a creative writer. Please note: this is a 3-credit seminar course. You should expect to do less work than in the 5-credit memoir workshop.
Last offered: Winter 2023
ENGLISH 90E: Investigating Identity Through Filipinx Fiction (ASNAMST 90E, COMPLIT 89)
This course is both a reading seminar featuring canonical and contemporary Filipinx authors (including Mia Alvar, Carlos Bulosan, Elaine Castillo, Bienvenido Santos, Lysley Tenorio and José Rizal) and a writing workshop where students generate short stories exploring identity. Rizal's seminal novels Noli Me Tangere and El filibusterismo are ¿the earliest artistic expressions of the Asian colonial experience from the point of view of the oppressed¿ and through his work and the work of other Filipinx authors, we discover how both national and individual identities are not only challenged by adversity, trauma, violence, and war but also forged and strengthened by them. Note: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 90FC: First Chapters
Novels only get one chance to make a good first impression. Chapter One is that opportunity, and in this course we'll read, discuss, and analyze a variety of historical and contemporary novels with a particular focus on their opening chapter (and sometimes prologue). We'll study strategies around world-building, characterization, creating the engine of a novel (its voice), and in establishing a lively, complex, and surprising world that a reader can't wait to explore in greater detail.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Kealey, T. (PI)
ENGLISH 90H: Humor Writing Workshop
What makes writing funny? What are we doing when we try to be funny? In this creative writing workshop, you'll exercise your native wit by writing short pieces of humor in a variety of forms. We'll practice writing jokes, parody, satire, sketches, stories, and more, study theories of humor, research practical principles and structures that writers have repeatedly used to make things funny, and enjoy and analyze examples of humor old and new to use as models. In the service of creating and understanding humor, we'll also explore questions about what purposes humor serves, and what relationship humor has with power, culture, and history.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors:
Porter, E. (PI)
ENGLISH 90L: Latine Stories (CHILATST 90)
This is a course on the craft of fiction writing. We will read published literary short stories by contemporary Latine writers writing in the United States and begin to explore the vast range of fictional techniques employed by these writers. In discussing these published works, we will analyze how the formal elements of story - structure, plot, character, point of view, etc. - function in these pieces, so that students can apply these principles of craft to their own work. Students will write two complete short stories, which will be discussed in a traditional workshop format.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Quade, K. (PI)
ENGLISH 90M: Queer Stories (FEMGEN 90M)
Like other 90 and 91-level courses, 90M will explore basic elements of fiction and nonfiction writing. Students will read a wide variety of stories and essays in order to develop a language for working through the themes, forms, and concerns of the queer prose canon. Students will complete and workshop a piece of writing that in some way draws upon the aesthetics or sensibilities of the work we have read, culled from exercises completed throughout the quarter. This final piece may be a short story, a personal essay, a chapter from a novel or memoir, or a piece that, in the spirit of queerness, blurs or interrogates standard demarcations of genre. The course is open to any and all students, regardless of how they define their gender or sexuality. NOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 90Q: Sports Writing
Study and practice of the unique narratives, tropes, images and arguments that creative writers develop when they write about popular sport. From regional fandom to individualist adventuring, boxing and baseball to mascot dancing and table tennis, exceptional creative writers mine from a diversity of leisure activity a rich vein of sports writing in the creative nonfiction genre. In doing so, they demonstrate the creative and formal adaptability required to write with excellence about any subject matter, and under the circumstances of any subjectivity. Discussion of the ways in which writers have framed, and even critiqued, our interest in athletic events, spectatorship, and athletic beauty. Writers include Joyce Carol Oates, Roland Barthes, David James Duncan, Arnold Rampersad, John Updike, Maxine Kumin, Susan Sterling, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Dervla Murphy, Haruki Murakami, Don DeLillo, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Annie Dillard, John McPhee, and Laura Hillenbrand. Close readings of essays on form and sport, as well as book excerpts. Students will engage in class discussions and write short weekly papers, leading to a more comprehensive project at the end of the quarter.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
Instructors:
Evans, J. (PI)
ENGLISH 90QN: Quantum Narratives:Writing Fiction about Science, Philosophy and Human Experience in the Quantum Age
Classical modes of storytelling have served writers and readers for centuries, but with mainstream recognition of the complexities and uncertainties that underpin reality, might there also exist less traditional, but perhaps truer, modes of storytelling? Shouldn't our narrative approaches be updated to incorporate quantum realities such as uncertainty, superposition and 'spooky action?' Can characters become entangled or exist in many worlds? What are the narrative implications of a black hole? This course hopes to examine the assertion by Cixin Liu, in his novel The Three-Body Problem, that 'Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all humankind,' as it transcends culture, language and individual experience. Designed for writers and readers interested in exploring the narrative implications and possibilities of science, computing and AI, this workshop-focused course will combine readings, writing exercises and story crafting. Open to writers of all levels and backgrounds, the focus will be on research/science-based narrative rather than fantasy/folkloric writing. (i.e. wormholes, okay; elves and dragons, not so much.)
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
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